Siraj is now inducing more false shots, and the wickets are bound to come automatically.
Mohammed Siraj has exceeded expectations on this Australia Tour by showing better bowling smarts and taking more wickets. Not too long ago, his bowling looked off-colour, for he was erring too much with his lines and lengths and tried too much to take wickets.
Consequently, he was dropped from the national team during the home Test series against New Zealand. Amidst all this, former Indian bowling coach Bharat Arun helped him by working on a major technical fault in his bowling that was leading him to bowl wayward.
On Indian Express, Bharat explained he watched Siraj wasn’t putting his wrist behind the ball in an attempt to increase his pace. So, he wasn’t getting enough movement, and his seam position wasn’t ideal, either.
“The main problem as I saw it was his wrist wasn’t behind the ball, his most crucial weapon. In his effort to increase the pace, all these mistakes were creeping up. Perhaps he felt a bit rushed at the crease. What happens then is your body can also slide/tilt a bit more, especially if you are an open-chested bowler like him. That meant his radar was now going down.”
Now that the problem in Siraj’s bowling was identified, Bharat Arun prepared a proper solution. He asked Siraj to bowl as many yorkers as possible and aim at one stump only since bowling a good yorker is arduous until a bowler puts his wrist completely behind the ball.
“I then told him to bowl a lot of yorkers at that one stump. Now, this is not to improve his yorkers but to get the wrist in the right position behind the ball. You can’t bowl yorkers, good ones that is, without the wrist in the right position. If it’s tilted or out of shape, then the ball won’t go where you want it to go. When the wrist is behind, the pace also increases automatically.”
Bharat has worked with Siraj since his First Class years and knows what works for him. So, he immediately recognised what was going wrong and worked on it to help him regain his lost touch.
Siraj later called Arun after the Perth Test, telling him the yorker plan had worked. He is now inducing more false shots, and the wickets are bound to come automatically.
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